The Basketball Diaries

Houston Rockets 112 Miami Heat 100

Holy shit do the Heat suck. With their loss to the Houston Rockets on Thursday night, the Heat have now lost 25 of their last 26 games. As Charles Barkley said at halftime, they're tanking it for the lottery pick. The Rockets meanwhile are like the Heat, except exactly the opposite. They're the hottest team in the NBA right now, as Thursday was their 10th straight win, and 14th in their last 15 games. Yao Ming had 23 points, and Tracy MacGrady had 21 to lead a Rockets team that said goodbye to three players through trades earlier in the day. "Everything happens for a reason and we've got to understand that this is a business," Carl Landry said. "We've got to be positive about the situation and try to go on and continue the winning streak."

San Antonio Spurs 100 Minnesota Timberwolves 99

The Spurs have historically been a second half team, so if they're going to break out of their early season doldrums (San Antonio's standard for doldrums being 36-17) it has to start by beating teams like Minnesota. They did just that on Thursday night, but it wasn't anywhere near as easy as it should have been. Manu Ginobili scored 44 points for the Spurs, and they needed every single one of them, including his game-winning shot with 6.2 seconds left. "I always try to get to the rim, but Foye took over my left pretty good and my counter move is always step back right," Ginobili said. "I got lucky there, took a good shot and it went in."

Elsewhere...

• Blazers 92 Sonics 88

Same Old Crap

This is getting kind of old, isn't it? The Bears win a game to get near .500 and everybody thinks they're going to make a playoff run, and then they come out and lose their next game.

Things started out so well on Sunday, too. Cedric Benson (Cedric Benson!) actually ran for a 43-yard touchdown. The same Cedric Benson who hadn't had a rush longer than 16 yards all season actually rushed for 43 yards on one play.

Normally it takes him 14 carries to reach that total.

Then to make things even crazier, the next time Cedric touched the ball, he broke off a 19-yard run.

He had 62 yards on two carries! And the Bears were up 10-0! I actually started thinking we might make the playoffs, myself.

Then reality came back and knocked us all on our ass. So Cedric started with 62 yards on his first two carries? Well he finished with 89 yards on 11 carries, so his last nine carries were right on average.

I'm not sure why the Bears stopped going to Benson afterwards. I know the plan all week had called for Adrian Peterson to get more carries, but with the way Cedric was running, maybe abandoning that plan wouldn't have been a bad idea.

As far as Rex goes, I have to say, he didn't play bad. No touchdowns, but no interceptions either. Of course there was the fumble as Patrick Kerney stripped the ball from his hands that basically sealed the deal for the Bears.

Still, I can't get mad at Rex for this one.

I can get mad at the defense though. The Seahawks picked the Bears defense apart with short pass after short pass, and the Bears never seemed to adjust.

I really don't know what else to say about this game, I've become numb watching this team play every week. It's the same old crap every week. The coaching staff comes up with a plan during the week, and then no matter what happens on Sunday, they stick to the plan.

Whether it's by taking Benson out of the gameplan despite his success, or having our corners keep playing off Seattle's receivers no matter how many times they burned the defense on those short slants.

This is easily the most stubborn coaching staff I've ever seen.

So now if the Bears have any shot at making the playoffs, they'll have to win every single game from here on out. Do you honestly think that's going to happen?

Monster of the Midway

• Cedric Benson - I know Cedric kinda went to crap after his first two runs of the game, but I've been a pretty vocal critic of his for a while now, and he showed up on Sunday. It's not his fault the Bears stopped giving him the ball. Had they kept feeding him the ball, this game may have turned out a lot differently.

Dumbass of the Day

• Fred Miller - I hate picking on an offensive lineman here, because when they play well, how often am I making them the Monster of the Midway? It doesn't really seem fair, but still, this one is deserved. Miller not only had two key false start penalties in the second half, but he was also abused by Patrick Kerney all day. Kerney finished with 3 sacks, including the one that caused the Grossman fumble and basically killed the Bears.
  

The Seahawks Are Gay

We're serious.

Just look at their quarterback.

GSWM,30, seeks like minded male to be his personal receiver. I love to go deep.

Note to Matt Hasselbeck, it's really hard to be sexy when you're balding and you enjoy going to Carrie Underwood concerts.

There is simply no way that the Bears can lose to the Seahawks this weekend. It's physically impossible. For further proof, let's introduce you to the new Seahawks theme song. (Last year it was the epic Sweet Shaun Alexander.)

Deadspin led us to this song yesterday, but we found the video.

Wow, nothing puts the fear of God into you like a remix of a Justin Timberlake song.